LEGO Ideas is an invitation and a challenge; if you can design and build something people love, LEGO will design it, sell it, and even split the profits with you. The process of getting a LEGO idea to this final stage is long and design driven; it’s building a passionate and proactive community of builders, who will also be the first to buy the set when it finally hits the shelves.

LEGO’s latest idea set is Home Alone, a 3955-piece celebration of the 1990 Christmas classic starring Macaulay Culkin. There are 24 distinct phases in the build, which are communicated visually and non-verbally via a thick instruction booklet. There are two sticker pages for adding additional graphic detail; elements printed on the bricks themselves are rare.

There are five LEGO minifigures included in the build – Kevin McCallister, Harry, Marv, Kevin’s mother and Old Man Marley – and each of them has accessories. Kevin has a bowl of chocolate ice cream, a scarf and a hat to go out on, and a sled he can use to go down the stairs. Old Man Marley has a snow shovel and a trash can. Both Wet Bandits have matching crowbars, and Harry’s knit beanie is interchangeable with a police hat – a throwback to the film’s first scene, when Harry infiltrates the McCallister household to do reconnaissance work under the guise of being law enforcement. Upon closer examination, the Harry minifigure even has a small gold tooth.

You start building by assembling the Wet Bandits truck. The roof is modular, which allows you to put Harry and Marv in the driver and passenger seats. There is a container in the back of the truck, where the Wet Bandits keep their stolen goods and valuables.

If you’ve ever built minifigure scale vehicles, this is no different. The granular details – the side mirrors, the headlights and turn signals, the small steering wheel – have their requisite charm, but they’re common elements across several versions.

The van is an appetizer for the main course: the huge McCallister house itself, which consists of a basement, first floor, second floor and attic. Each level is modular and separable; if you’re showing the set to a fan, you’ll need to unstack the floors and let in some light to get the full effect.

Each of the rooms has three layers of narration. The first layer is the luxurious McCallister house itself, as it was the morning Kevin’s family left for the airport without him. We see fancy chairs and a dining table. We see the attic with the pull-out sofa bed and weird knick-knacks like a random gumball machine, which the family probably bought on a whim, put away, and forgot about. We see family photos on the walls. We see a photo of Buzz’s girlfriend in Buzz’s room.

The interior and exterior of the house are festive. Wreaths hang above the doors and ceiling beams. Christmas lights hang from the bushes in the front yard. The designers even used well-placed white bricks to create the illusion of freshly melted snow,

The second narrative layer is evidence of Kevin living in the McCallister household, now that he has it all. We see empty pizza boxes on the tables and boxes of macaroni and cheese in the fridge. We see Buzz’s tarantula out of its cage, hanging on the wall opposite the stairs. We see the “AHHHHH!!!” aftershave in the soap dish above the bathroom sink. There’s a small TV in the kitchen, and it’s playing Angels with Filthy Souls, the movie within a movie that Kevin used to trick the pizza boy and the Wet Bandits into thinking he wasn’t alone.

The third narrative layer is Kevin’s “battle plan” to stop the Wet Bandits from breaking into the house. LEGO designers have included almost every trap from the movie. There are toy cars littering the living room floor. There is a torch above the back exit of the house. There’s a massive paint can, tied by a string, at the top of the stairs. There is an iron that can fall from the upper floor into the basement; The head of the Marv figure is reversible and has a red iron-like imprint on his head.

The set includes several interactive elements. In Buzz’s room, there’s a shelf that collapses when you pull the rod holding it in place. There’s another rod you can push down, which will launch Kevin and his sled down two flights of stairs and into the front yard. There’s a series of gears under the house, and if you turn them, the train downstairs will move and the record player will spin. This comes from a scene early in the film, where Kevin rigged the house and cast human-shaped shadows in the windows. One of the best stickers in the set is a graphic of a Michael Jordan minifigure, which you attach to the toy train’s passenger car.

It should be noted that the interactive elements are not designed for prolonged play. If you completed this set and gave it to a seven-year-old child, for example, it wouldn’t stay together for very long. Interactive elements are more “one-and-done” novelties that you can show off to a curious viewer. But it takes patience to reset the shelf or set up the living room in such a cramped space The Home Alone set works best as a display piece, where you can stage the scenario and stop it on a moment’s notice .

The coolest interactive element is the oven in the basement. In the film, Kevin is frightened by its appearance, and imagines it to be an open-mouthed monster. The oven in the set has a hinged mouth, plus an orange LEGO light brick that creates the impression of fire. There is also a children’s tree house separate from the McCallister house. It’s attached by string to the second floor of the house, and you can re-enact the climactic zipline scene at the end of the film.

It’s a lot of details. And the cumulative impact, when the house is fully open and unfolded, is fantastic. Thanks to the abundance of brown and beige colors, the house gives the impression of woodworking, as if it were something that was shaped by hand in a Victorian workshop rather than on an assembly line.

LEGO Ideas Home Alone is one of those rare quality sets that exceeds expectations; the presentation and construction are more fun and engaging than you might think. For one thing, that makes it hard to find; it is currently sold out on the official LEGO website and stocks at stores and online retailers are limited. On the other hand, it sets a wonderful precedent – that something so detailed and complex could be accessible to the general public. And by that thought, LEGO should feel encouraged to release more sets like this in the months and years to come.

LEGO Ideas Home Alone, Set #21330, is made up of 3955 pieces and retails for $249.99. It was originally designed by LEGO fan Alex Storozhuk. It was then refined and designed by LEGO designers Antica Bracanov and Enrique Belmonte Beixer, as well as graphic designer Kirsten Bay Nielsen.